On Aug. 28, 1951, FBI agents arrested seven Hawai'i residents on charges of conspiring to teach and advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
Dubbed the Hawaii Seven, they were ILWU regional director Jack Hall, Honolulu Record publisher Koji Ariyoshi, University of Hawai'i chemist and Hawai'i chairman of the Communist Party Charles Fujimoto, Fujimoto's wife Eileen (an ILWU secretary), former Farrington High School teacher John Reinecke and Honolulu Record employees Jack Kimoto and Dwight James Freeman. They were all charged under the 1940 Smith Act.
According to an essay on labor history in Hawai'i published by the ILWU, federal agents reportedly offered to suppress Hall's indictment if he agreed to sever his membership's links to the national ILWU. He refused.
The trial of the Hawaii Seven lasted more than seven months and resulted in convictions for all seven. In response, nearly 50,000 ILWU members held "stop-work meetings" at their work sites.
All the defendants except Eileen Fujimoto were sentenced to the maximum punishment — five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Eileen Fujimoto got a three-year prison sentence and a $2,000 fine.
Hall did not spend any time in jail. The other six each spent a week in jail and then were bailed out.
The convictions were overturned in the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1958. The decision was based on a 1957 ruling on another Smith Act case in which the U.S. Supreme Court established a distinction between advocacy of a political doctrine and advocacy of action.
